What do you look for in an audition monologue?

Do you look for a piece that will engage the director or adjudicators?

Something that will give you the chance to really show off your acting range?

Do you want to be unique with a piece they have probably not seen before?

Or do you want something that is in the current mindset?

The award winning Great War play, Dear Mother can offer all of these points and more!

As it is written in letter format and each scene is performed by a single actor each time, with no other interactions, it allows that actor to reach out and talk to the audience directly, really drawing them into their dialogue.

Dear Mother is recently published play (March 2014) so the chances of having the same audition piece as someone else is very small. It allows you to portray the part without prejudice of another actor who has played the role in film or on stage. You really can make the role your own. As it is new, you have more chance of being able to engage those that you are playing for, as they are unlikely to know the story. It can be very easy to turn off when you have heard the same piece time and time again, but listening to something new might give you an edge with an increased chance of them wanting to hear the story.

Scenes 2 and 3 of Dear Mother allow the actor a choice of different emotions and techniques to explore.

In January 2011, as I sat down in my little one bedroom flat above an estate agent in the small village of Tisbury, I started to type away at my computer trying to write a script that I thought would play for a single night in a one act play festival. My only dream at that point was to try not to embarrass myself by writing something boring or that people couldn’t understand.

Today, over three years later, I am now looking back at what those few words have achieved.

Dear Mother has gone to tour different theatres and festivals in the South and South West. It has been widely accepted by audiences and has gained a following that have gone back to see the play time and time again. It continues to be requested at various events and theatres. It has also received excellent reviews from directors, authors, actors and also military personnel. Today it has been published as a play script and is available from any bookshop across the world and within literally hours of the launch date, it has now sold out on Amazon.

Dear Mother still continues to grow even now and as we enter the anniversary of the Great War, it is showing signs that it will pick up even more pace.

Barely able to hold the pencil in his frozen muddy fingers, Thomas started to etch the words on the dirty soggy paper that he had been storing for months in his uniform. The pencil was small and worn, the nib crudely shaved to a point with a small pocket knife that he carried.

Remembering how his handwriting use to flow across the page in small neat lines and swirls, the frustration of struggling to finish the first few words played on his mind.

Eyes that had seen pain and inhuman amounts of suffering, filled with a salty glaze as he began to try to recall them.

Taking a second to compose himself, Thomas looked up at the clay filled gully that had been his home for what seemed forever, but in fact had only been a few months. He could see his fellow soldiers lying on the thinnest planks of wood, helmets rested over their eyes to block out the drizzling rain. Others sat in puddles on the ground talking to each other, seemingly nonchalant of the conditions they lived in. After everything they’d experienced and done since arriving in the hell hole, no one seemed to care about feeling a little cold, they could only focus on what was happening now.

Very soon you will be able to pre-order your copy of Dear Mother written by me and published by Magic Oxygen.

It’s a one act play and follows the journey of a young boy via letters to his mother at the turn of the 20th Century. Over the course of less than a decade, you discover how a man’s world was seen through the eyes of a young boy and find out how it managed to destroy a childhood before it had begun.

We have all heard stories and seen films of men in battle. Now, almost 100 years after the start of the Great War, it can be very easy to feel complacent about the challenges many service men and women had to face in the past. We see images of men in the trenches, we look out over those baron landscapes of no-man’s land and hear the stories that are told in so many different ways; these reminders almost seem to have lost their shock effect at first glance.

I have to admit, I too fell into this trap for a while.

War was something that my grandfather’s generation were involved in, then they spent the rest of their lives going on and on about; it was a life that I didn’t really understand and hadn’t fully considered.

I am delighted to smash the obligatory bottle of champagne on the side of my shiny new website!

I’m Mark James, a dad, actor and passionate playwright and this is where I’ll be posting news of the strange thoughts that have been rattling around in my head, creative events and hot-off-the-press news about stuff, including my forthcoming play, Dear Mother.

Simon West and his small but perfectly formed team at Magic Oxygen Publishing have made the first of my dreams a reality.

My début play, Dear Mother will be be launched as a performance script on 28th April 2014 and I’m really looking forward to telling you all about it. It’s a very emotional piece, so make a mental note to have tissues to hand and I’ve lots more up my sleeves…plays, not tissues… Continue reading